2025 Community Health Needs Assessment Greater Hartford Community Focus Groups Summary Report

The North Hartford Triple Aim Collaborative (NHTAC) Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA) Workgroup convenes representatives from Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, DataHaven, Hartford HealthCare, Trinity Health of New England, and the United Way of Central and Northeastern Connecticut to support health assessment and planning activities in Greater Hartford. In 2025, staff from the United Way along with representatives from the CHNA Workgroup and the broader NHTAC coalition identified a diverse group of community partners and supported them in organizing a series of community focus groups across Greater Hartford.

From March 21 through April 30, 2025, these community partners hosted ten focus groups. The focus groups were oriented almost entirely to adult residents of the Greater Hartford area, with an emphasis on residents living within the City of Hartford. A few groups included a staff member and/or volunteer from the participating community organizations to provide context or support. In total, approximately 90 adults participated in these focus groups, representing a diverse cross-section of residents in terms of age, sex, race/ethnicity, town of residence, language, lived experiences, and health conditions.

For each focus group, a staff person from DataHaven introduced themselves and facilitated and moderated the discussion. A second staff person from DataHaven recorded detailed notes for each focus group, including some direct quotes and notes on nonverbal or contextual details such as emotional intensity and group agreement. Spanish interpreters were provided by DataHaven or community partners where necessary. Nine focus groups were conducted in person and on-site at the community partner’s primary location, while one focus group was conducted virtually. Community organizations and participants were offered honoraria to recognize their time and effort. Each session typically lasted 90 minutes. For each focus group, residents and stakeholders shared information on needs related to community health, with prompts including findings from the previous CHNA (2022) conducted in Greater Hartford as well as more current results from the 2024 DataHaven Community Wellbeing Survey. Focus group participants were asked to reflect on what they felt were the most pressing issues in their communities, to identify what community assets were in place to address those needs, and to share their vision for a healthier community for adults and children living in the Greater Hartford area.

Once all focus groups were completed, DataHaven used a multi-phase approach for thematic analysis of the notes. Qualitative data analysis began with initial coding, which generated several dozen open codes that were used to tag nearly 1,000 individual comments, ideas, personal or community concerns, and views on local assets. Next, DataHaven staff used an iterative approach to cluster related tags into a comprehensive codebook of sub-themes, to enable more consistency in the analysis. Finally, DataHaven used thematic clustering of the sub-themes to develop topline findings organized around 13 summary-level topics that appeared across all of the focus groups. Presented below, DataHaven’s topline findings and descriptive findings by topic account for the frequency of mentions of each sub-theme as well as the contextual factors noted above.